You Want to Live Like Working People

The British press is cosplaying as a champion of ‘working people’ while obsessing over even the slightest of tax rises to the asset rich

‘You want to see whatever working people see…’

If you really want to understand what motivates the British media, you only need to look at how it has covered the build up to next week’s Budget.

For months, newspapers have been filled with horror stories about the threat to “middle Britain” posed by Labour’s plans to impose VAT on private school fees.

Heartrending tales about families having to postpone their skiing holidays, or switch from always shopping at Waitrose, to doing the occasional shop at Tesco, have filled the pages of papers like the Mail, Times and Telegraph.

Broadcasters have followed their lead, asking Labour politicians endless questions about the supposed injustice of prioritising the 93% of children who attend state schools over the 7% of children who don’t.

Meanwhile, questions about the many hundreds of state school buildings literally falling apart, with headteachers forced to beg parents for donations just to get by, have gone missing in action.

Also missing in action has been any mention of the fact that while only a small minority of the population go to a private school, this compares to the close to half of all leading journalists who are now asking so many questions about them.